Apparently one of the newfangled technologies that caused all the chaos was the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), now for those of you unaware of this thorn in the police’s side. It is a glorified texting service, that is all. If people did not have the BBM they would have used regular texting, as I’m sure many of them did, not every person has a BlackBerry. In the age of the mobile phone communication has become easier, unfortunately this makes organising riots easier. Yet there was no suggestion of calling for police to have the power to disrupt phone signals in times of emergency, that would be political suicide, social media is just an easy object to knock at this moment.

The point is, there is no necessity for any regulation or legislation. There are already laws in place regarding the incitement of violence and hatred. Thinking about it, social media is probably the best place for people to try and organise violence. The very nature of social media means that any plans and accomplices are firmly placed in the public forum. The authorities should be able to monitor these groups and tweets and act accordingly.

What worries me is where would this proposed ban on social media end? A search for “Plymouth” in Twitter showcased dozen’s of people threatening violence against those who rioted, all obvious acts of bravado with very little substance but still violent in nature. Are these people going to arrested as well? Paul Chamber’s was arrested in 2010 for jokingly tweeting that he was going to ‘blow Robin Hood airport sky high!”. He clearly wasn’t a terrorist threat and yet police time and resources were wasted in detaining and questioning him.

How many insincere calls to violence are there on the internet? Should we have to end each Facebook status or Tweet with ‘lol’ or ‘: p’ just to show the police that we really aren’t serious?